“Leo is no longer my brother.”
Recognizing the voice, Caleb’s brow furrowed in annoyance. “I hope you’ll stop using him as an excuse to contact my family.”
The caller was my birth mother.
Maybe it was the illness, or maybe it was the guilt, but she was silent for a moment before her voice came back, weak and choked with tears. “It was my fault. I never should have… switched Leo and Finn all those years ago. But Leo is innocent. Can’t you… can’t you treat him like you used to?”
It was a cliché straight out of a soap opera.
I was the wrong son, the cuckoo in the Kane family’s nest. was born with a severe congenital heart defect. My birth mother, afraid I wouldn’t survive, had secretly swapped me with the Kanes‘ newborn son. It wasn’t until she was diagnosed with terminal lung
cancer that she confessed the truth.
She had dragged Finn to the gates of the Kane estate, kneeling and sobbing. “I was wrong! And now I’m paying for it! I’m giving Finn back to you… please, just let me see Leo. He’s my real son!”
But when she finally saw me, she’d said, “The Kanes paid for your treatment, so you didn’t lose out. You had twenty years of luxury.
Now it’s Finn’s turn.”
I wasn’t hurt. She was right, after all,
The second night after Finn moved in, he came to my room, feigning reconciliation. He said he would beg our–his–parents to let
me stay.
Like a fool, I blushed and told him, “I want to stay too. But… not as Caleb’s brother anymore.”
And so, I confessed to Caleb.
I told him I was both heartbroken and relieved. I told him I’d known for years that what I felt for him was far more than brotherly
affection. I told him I wanted to be with him forever.
I watched him, my heart pounding with a mix of terror and hope.
But his face was a mask of cold disappointment.
“Hah,” he sneered. “Be with me forever? You mean you want to stay in the Kane family and live a life of comfort forever.”
He pulled a small voice recorder from his pocket. My voice filled the air, speaking words I’d said to Finn the day before. But they
were all wrong. It was my voice, but twisted into something ugly.
“I have a way to stay. If I can get with Caleb, the Kanes will never kick me out. I was always so close to him on purpose. Now, it’s
finally time to use him.”
The wail of an ambulance siren outside the hospital doors ripped me from my memory.
03:20
Chapter
An ER doctor rushed past, accidentally bumping into Caleb
“Sorry,” the doctor said over his shoulder. “Got a cardiac arrest coming in, sorry for bumping you.”
Caleb paused for a second, then shook his head, accepting the apology. He turned his attention back to the phone. “You want me to treat him like I used to? You mean watch him pretend to be innocent and pitiful while he uses me all over again?”
A cruel laugh escaped his lips. “I guess cheap tricks run in the family. Otherwise, how could he even think of confessing to his own
brother?”
A nurse’s voice suddenly cut in from the background of the call. “Bed 3, if you don’t pay the hospital bill, we’re going to have to stop
her medication…”
Caleb heard it, and his voice became hard with certainty. “He didn’t come here for a check–up. He came to get money from me for
you didn’t he?”
Without waiting for an answer, he hung up.
He immediately opened his messages and started typing.
Leo, don’t bother coming.]
I’m not giving you a single cont]
I didn’t come for your money. I’ll never ask you for money again.
Even though I knew he couldn’t see me, I took a step back. I wanted to put some distance between us.
Because I could feel it.
He truly, deeply disliked me.
So much that he could only imagine me as the worst kind of person
“He’s not coming. Let’s go.”
When he got no reply from me, Caleb stalked out of the building, fuming.
As he got into the car, the ambulance screamed past them, pulling up to the entrance. A gurney, covered by a white sheet, was
wheeled inside.
Caleb saw it in the rearview mirror, frowned, and looked away.
The Rolls–Royce began to move, but just as it reached the hospital gate, the driver stopped,
Someone was knocking on the rear window.
Caleb lowered it to see the same FR doctor who had bumped into him earlier.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
